From screen to script to stage

Editor: Nick Scovell · Last update: Monday, October 29, 2007

Having decided to attempt to adapt such a long ‘saga’ from twelve parts down to the equivalent of four (or from 290 minutes to 90), I sat down and cried. No, not really.

My first step was to get hold of a copy of the original script and see what we had to start from.

Having got a copy, I read it with relish. I found the experience quite surprising, as it seemed quite clear what basic structure our adaptation would take. It would be the simplest and clearest way to tell the story if we took, basically, the beginning and the end and cut out the middle!

Much of the original Masterplan was a chase. From one location to another, from one situation of peril to another, from – as it seemed to have been done like this – from one episode to another. Originally created to fulfil a brief of having a 12-part Dalek story, Masterplan seems to just about manage it. The story is set up over the first three episodes, and then truly begins in part four. It then starts to wind up in part ten, before finishing in part twelve. It seemed clear that the script falls into these three ‘chunks.’ My first job was to decide which parts of these ‘chunks’ could work the best on stage.

Also, my intention was to clarify and build on aspects of the original story and characters that were left a trifle vague – what exactly is the capability of the Time Destructor? What exactly is the Daleks’ Master Plan? All these will be answered with relish in the stage version, as there will be a few surprises and revelations along the way…

As with Evil, I first started to just adapt the script from a screenplay to a stage script. This was a literal ‘translation.’ However, it would have meant the show would run for about five hours! From this ‘transcript’ I began looking at what sequences, or scenes, would be able to tell the story best, without it losing its original essence. This was relatively straightforward, and then it got a bit tricky…

The first scene I worked on was the council meeting, which is contained in part two; Day of Armageddon. It seemed a good place to start. Then, it struck me how dramatic it would be if this scene could be the first entrance of the Daleks and, instead of co-operating with the Council, they swept in and exterminated them, leaving Chen and a couple of cronies to be the ‘obligatory traitors.’ It was here that the ‘tone’ of the show began to form clearly in my mind, and the rest of the adaptation came fairly easily.

With adapting any script or story from one medium to another, you have to consider three options.

  • It must be recognisable as the original story.
  • It must work as a stand alone piece of drama.
  • It must have its own identity to work as a stand alone drama.

With the change in emphasis in that council meeting scene, it set the tone very well for the whole piece, and seemed to answer the above three criteria.

As the adaptation progressed, the reality of the world in which Masterplan is set really became solid. Whilst there are more alterations to the flow, characters and dialogue of the original story than there was in Evil, it will still give people what they want The Dalek Masterplan to be – an epic struggle, with very high stakes, and with many sacrifices made along the way. I wanted to make the characters very real, very human and full of the weaknesses and strengths that we all have. Relationships have been changed, but only to deepen the impact of what these characters have to go through. This enhances the essence of the original, whilst, at the same time, reflecting the ‘modern’ Doctor Who and giving our audiences something that feels new and unique.

Here we have an adventure that has the potential to really crank up the dramatic possibilities of Doctor Who, as the Doctor is literally caught in the middle of a build-up to an interplanetary war of devastating consequence and, for once, seems to lose far more than he gains…